Stolen
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: His voice is close against her ear, deep and throaty and only for her."


STOLEN

by

Lady Rowan Copyright (c) 2008

The heat pulls her from sleep, begins in a dream and drags her upwards toward consciousness. She hasn't felt it this way in many years. She's forgotten how she once relished these moments, the almost...intimate...intrusions. She's forgotten, too, the blur of sensory input, the moment of disorientation as reality resolves around her.

The sensation starts as a warmth at the base of her spine, spreading like fingers down her thighs, heating the pit of her stomach and dancing tentacles of heat and icicles around her ribcage.

She told him once his nearness made her skin crawl. She understated. She lied.

Xena opens her eyes in the darkness, draws an audible breath before her conscious reflexes can silence her body.

Full dark, barest outlines beneath a silvery moon, Gabrielle's steady breath somewhere beside her, the sighing remnants of a fire. Another presence in the dark. Her hand lies above her head, backs of her knuckles resting on the cool metal of her chakram.

Her fingers don't curl around the edge.

"Ares..." she breathes, with hardly enough sound to call it a whisper.

"Xena." His voice is close against her ear, deep and throaty and only for her. She imagines she can feel the pressure of his breath on the nape of her neck, but there is no body beside her, only sound.

She draws a slow breath, expelling the lingering blurriness of sleep.

She rolls to her feet in the darkness, and with a brief glance toward Gabrielle, she slips away into the trees.

"Ares?" The tone is strange on her own tongue, and she wonders how long it's been since she received an unannounced visit without anger.

Her eyes sting at the momentary flash of blue light as he materializes before her, walking from nothingness to the corporeal as though strolling through a doorway.

"Sorry to wake you," he says, all charm and nothing like sincerity. But there is more, she feels it.

She takes a step toward him in the narrow clearing of ground between trees. The night wind is cool on her arms, her skin still sleep softened and warm. She left her weapons and armor and even her boots behind, clad in nothing but her leathers. "What brings you here? Thought you'd have some catching up to do. Stirring up trouble already?"

Ares shrugs. "Thought I'd drop by, let you know everything's getting back to business as usual on Olympus. It's a bit quiet these days, but that has its merits as well. There's a reason I always spent so much time in the Halls of War."

She exhales on a half-smile. "And Aphrodite?"

He nods, paces a bit, and she holds her place and lets her gaze track his movements. "Right back to being the annoying sister I've known and loved." He pauses and meets her gaze for a moment and she realizes she can see him too well. The moon isn't providing all the light. There is a silver-blue glow cocooning them like a bubble, and she knows the light came with him. "Thanks for that," he adds, and she wants to feel nothing but gratitude for this very human offering, but the sting of her choices is still hot and she doesn't want credit for one more burn on her soul.

She narrows her eyes and gives a stiff nod.

If Ares catches the aversion, he lets it go. "So, what about the Warrior Princess and her favorite blond? Anything exciting happen while I've been away?"

"Just making our way home."

He lifts his eyebrow, feigns a frown. "I thought you two didn't have a home. Travelling do-gooders and all that. Or did you mean Grandma's farm?"

"Greece," she offers simply.

"Ah."

The silence between them falls awkward. And she realizes this is something new. There has been screaming and hatred, quiet bitterness or comfortable camaraderie. But never silence. Familiar ground isn't familiar, anymore. "Well," she says at last, tongue sliding over too-dry lips, "if that's all, we're planning an early start tomorrow morning, so I--"

"I wish you'd taken the apple."

She cracks a wry smile, clicks her tongue. "Not my thing, Ares."

"Too bad. I still say, you and I...godhood...Olympus...I can only imagine what we could--"

"Like I said," she takes a step back, makes to turn away, "We mere mortals still need sleep, so if you don't mind, I think I'm gonna--"

"Xena...thank you."

She regards him in silence for a beat too long, draws a breath through her nose to clear her head. "Didn't you already say that?"

"That was for saving my sister. This was for...giving me back my godhood."

"You gave it up to help my family. This makes us even."

"It wasn't meant as a bargain."

She wants to snap, "Isn't everything with you?" Wants to verbally slap him in the face one more time for using her infant daughter as a bargaining chip. Her reaction is quick and habitual, but somehow the words won't pass her tongue. The midnight glade is quiet, the godlight warm, and she still sees the look on his face as she stared at him over Athena's dead body.

Maybe she doesn't think it was a bargain.  
Her stomach hurts when she looks this fact in the eye.  
"Would you have done it?" he says, startling her out of her thoughts and making her wonder if she replied aloud.

She blinks at him in the shadows. "What?"

Ares takes a step closer, boots crunching on the nut-sprinkled ground, his silver-blue glow now feeling like a blanket on her skin. He draws the tip of a single finger down the line of her jaw; just enough pressure not to tickle, not enough to press her skin. She tightens her neck, combating the urge to lean into his touch as warm shivers prickle her side. "If Aphrodite had been given back her power first," he says, drawing out each word until she is conscious of the pace of her own breath and the movement of air between them, "if the world had been in balance, and you'd been...like you are now....Would you have offered me the apple?"

"It couldn't work that way without restoring your powers, Aphrodite would never have--" Her argument is lame and blind and she can't follow through. He's standing too near.

"Are you avoiding the question?" There's a hint of playfulness in his query...

...but none in her reply. "Yes."

"Yes?" He seems near offended, but she looks again, and there is something like genuine interest or maybe even concern in his eyes. She wants it to be tricks of the moonlight.

"Maybe, I..." She swallows hard, doesn't understand and doesn't want to acknowledge the thickness in her throat. "Maybe I understand. Something...I didn't before."

He moves still closer, until the hairs on his forearm brush against her own and she can smell leather and skin. She lets her gaze fall to a cratered boulder beside their feet. "Understand what?" he breathes, words ruffling the hairs at her temple.

She feels the scorch and burn. The hollowness of the fall. Remembers crawling toward flesh and comfort and Gabrielle's fingers in her hair. "How much it can hurt...," she says, "to lose a power you've come to depend on."

For a moment, nothing moves. His dark gaze holds to her face, the wind falls still, the grass doesn't tickle her bare feet. Then he reaches a hand toward her elbow, whispers, "Xena, Eli--" and she steps away.

"I'm glad to know you're okay," she says, tight-lipped and almost cold. But it's all she has; all she can let go. "Goodnight."

She's walking away, and she doesn't even hear him take a step on the crackling ground when his hand falls upon her back, fingers open, and warm palm like a fire at the small of her back. She wants to step away, steel her jaw and glare over her shoulder as she's done so many times before. But nothing is the same, 25 years have passed, and days ago this god at her back rolled over in a restless dream by their campfire and his dirt-stained fingers got tangled in her hair.

She doesn't move.

His hand presses closer. "Xena. I know what..."

She draws two full breaths in the silence, ribs pushing her into his warmth, before she says, "What?"

She swears she can hear him swallow. She sees the tension in his throat in her mind's eye. The same tendons that pull and thicken in a sword fight as in a moment of sincerity. "I know it hurts to lose the thing...you depend on," he finishes.

She stands for what seems like an eternity. Yet before she can take a breath to speak, he's just gone. Gone. And the night is deeply black and the air chills the warm imprint lingering at the small of her back. Her throat aches and she blinks to clear vision swimming with a rush of hot liquid. The air feels lifeless, night creatures silent and listening and waiting for something she cannot know.

She stands until her breath steadies, then she creeps back through the trees, one more shadow on shadows, and sinks to the bedroll at Gabrielle's side, the blankets still holding traces of warmth from her own body.

She closes her eyes and sidles closer to Gabrielle.

She tucks the blanket close at the small of her back.

#


End file.
